THE HOMUNCULUS I, 1940
Watercolour. 8 x 9¼in. (20.3 x 24cm.)
Inscribed on the reverse: ‘Alchemical Figure’, the title and the year.
Provenance
National Trust bequest.
TGA 929/4/10/3.
The concept of the homunculus was originally developed by Paracelsus. The mage takes some of his body fluids, semen for preference, adds silver and gold salts, and pours the result into a vessel. The vessel is kept at a constant temperature for nine months, after which a small, but fully grown man, will be found to have developed in the vessel. This homunculus is intelligent, has a will of his own and will grow to full size if left out of the vessel. Some mages keep the homunculus in the vessel for safe keeping, feeding him from their own blood. Homunculi are often used as advisors, savants or servants. If mistreated by the mage, the homunculus may turn against him.
In Death of the Virgin (1931) a crucifix, mounted on a plaque, hangs on the wall above the Virgin’s head. The plaque, four-lobed like a quatrefoil, but with the lower lobe extended, is strikingly similar to the outline of the homunculus in the two works that bear that title. The same outline also occurs in Christian Marriage Figure (1942). It is both a crucifix with rounded extremities and an immature body with budding limbs.
The outline of the homunculus, therefore, suggests birth, growth, death and resurrection. At the heart of the figure (this location is to be understood metaphorically as well as spatially), overlapping blue and red triangles symbolise the unification of the male and female principles, and of nature and spirit.
North-South and East-West axes indicate the cardinal points and reinforce the appearance of the cross. The E-W axis terminates at each end with with dotted circle, a symbol that occurs in several of the Christian Marriage paintings, usually in association with the ‘crossed lips’ motif that suggests the conjunction of the genders. The dotted circle is a common magical symbol. It indicated eternity to the Pythagoreans, Kether to Golden Dawn magicians, and for Kenneth Grant, it became a solar phallus.
The North end of the N-S axis has some symbols whose meaning is elusive, as well as lips and eyes. South ends in an oval, containing a group of symbols. It might be an interpretation too far to suggest that these represent urethra, vagina and anus, but, given the importance Colquhoun attached to the openings of the body (Colquhoun, 1970), this claim may not be as extravagant as it appears.
The Homunculus I is to be understood as the alchemical metamorphosis of individually gendered elements and the birth of a unified, integrated, being.
Reference
Colquhoun, I. The Openings of the Body. Quest, No. 4, December 1970,
pp 26-27.